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Report: Jenny Sanford on short list for SC Senate appointment

Sanford would bring an instant celebrity profile to the Senate and would almost certainly unleash a torrent of media attention. Aside from a national book tour, she has kept a low profile since weathering a storm of scandal in 2009, when her husband, then-Gov. Mark Sanford, disappeared from the state to visit his girlfriend in Argentina.

But she always wielded a muscular political hand behind the scenes during her husband’s campaigns and his time in the governor’s mansion. Her name frequently surfaces in discussions about future candidates for the lowcountry House seat currently held by Scott.

Sanford attended Woodlands Academy, an all-girls Catholic school in Lake Forest, Illinois.[2] She graduated magna cum laude, earning her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 1984.[2]

From 1984 until 1990, she worked at Lazard Freres & Company, an investment bank based in New York City,[2] eventually becoming a vice president in the firm’s mergers and acquisitions group. It was while she was working at Lazard that she met her future husband, Mark Sanford, at a beach party in the Hamptons on Long Island.[2] She later talked about the meeting in an interview with The Post and Courier, “It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. It was more like friendship at first sight.”[2]

In 1994, she managed her husband’s successful campaign for the United States House of Representatives, as well as his successful gubernatorial campaign in 2002.[2]

Sanford also acted as her husband’s advisor while he was in Congress.[2] According to the Governor’s website, she assisted him daily during his first term as Governor, and co-managed his successful re-election campaign in 2006. In 2005, she launched the Healthy South Carolina Challenge, an initiative to reduce the incidence of chronic preventable disease. She serves on the boards of several non-profits, including the Hollings Cancer Center, the Drayton Hall historical property in Charleston, the Coastal Community Foundation and the Children’s Hospital Advisory Fund.

Campaign managing plus some outside work experience is generally a good qualifier for office. But I’d say appoint her to Scott’s spot, and give Scott the Senate job.

alwaysfiredup on December 11, 2012 at 1:18 PM

There’s a world of difference between Congressman and Senator. She might not even want the former. I wonder if she’s conservative?

Per wiki, in the modern era, there have been only 4 black Senators, the last 3 all from Illinois. Carol Mosley-Braun, Obama, and Obama’s replacement, Roland Burris. Tim Scott, you know Joe Biden might say this is a big f***ing deal. I don’t know anything about Tim Scott though.